GIFSL* 66: Requests (made public) (+ Eragon, book 4)

(Two years ago)

Miss, I want to reserve Eragon book 4
Um, as far as I know it's not written yet - ?
No, it isn't.
So is he going to write it, do you know?
Probably.  Maybe.  I hope so.
Well...
I'd really like to reserve it, Miss.
OK then...

The kids know I have a collection of requests on post-t notes on a laminated sheet in my office .  This is what it looks like pretty much all the time:

It's very much in plain sight, where the kids can see it and I can too.  When a book has been requested and ordered, if it's orderable; Eragon book 4 clearly wasn't) it goes onto a post-it note with the kid's name and goes on here (the white sheet was a rather long list a kid brought in with her).  When the book comes in, we marry it up with the note and the kid/s on the list get to borrow it first.

It's also really effective (in terms of me remembering and in terms of the kid making the request feeling nicely important and valued) to, if you can, ring your wonderful local independent bookshop at lunchtime while the kid is there, to ask them to get in/put aside a copy of this title.  Kids have this happy shine when what they want is treated this way - it's good library PR too. 

I put a lot of my orders through a wonderful local independent bookshop - they know their stuff, especially with young adult fiction, and are fabulously helpful.  And it puts money back into the local area's economy.  And they put up with lunchtime phone calls when I order a single book or two at a time; so the kids also are alerted to a wonderful local helpful bookshop, which is not a bad thing either.

So cut to this week.  Same kid, two years taller, two years older (but still at school.  I'd kinda begun to wonder if he'd still be at school when Christopher Paolini got around to writing book 4....) bounces into my office with a happy smile on his face:

MISS!
Yes?
ERAGON BOOK 4!
Yup, I know, that post-it note is still there...
It's coming out in November!
What, he's written it?
YES!
Really?  Wow.

We look it up.  He has. It will.

The happy life of teacher librarians: wishes do come true.

Cheers

Ruth

2011 APA book cover design winners

Among the children and young adult book cover winners at the 2011 Australian Publishers' Association awards, you can find:

Best designed children's cover of the year

Best designed children's fiction book

Joint winners of the best-designed children's nonfiction book

Best designed children's picture book

Best designed children's series

Best designed young adult book

Best designed secondary education book

See all the awards, adult and children's, with the authors/designers and all on Fancy Goods, the Bookseller and Publisher magazine's blog here:

http://www.fancygoods.com.au/fancy-goods/2011/05/20/2011-apa-book-design-awards-winners/

It's interesting to see what gets industry awards like these; they're not always the ones the kids grab first. I'm sometimes hugely disappointed in book covers - the blurb sounds promising but the cover just ain't gonna grab the customers.  We get some great ones, but others (if I know that what's inside is worth the work) I'll do my best to hand-sell; but I can't hand-sell everything, and covers certainly matter.

One book I wish someone would re-issue with a modern, appealing cover is a teenage fiction book called, "A time to love, a time to mourn" by Paige Dixon (which I think was originally published with a title like, "Will you cross my golden river?".  It's a superb, well written family story, an unsentimental tearjerker - I still have a copy in the library, but it's a hard hard sell, so dated does the cover look.  Any publisher listening - ???

Congratulations to all those involved in the books above.

Cheers

Ruth

Film/Movie news: The Hunger Games

Tintin may be out at the end of 2011, but you'll have to wait till the end of 2012 for the film being made of Suzanne Collins' very successful book, The Hunger Games.  I have five copies of this in the library (and two or three of the sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and they are constantly either out or on reserev - it would be one of the most popular books in the library at present (five copies tells you that, doesn't it?).  Some of the kids are already starting to talk about the film.

Here's a glimpse of Jennifer Lawrence, who has been cast as Katniss:

Source is http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20493206,00.html.  She got great reviews in Winter's Bone.

There are several people on Twitter who are avidly following (and tweeting about) the film - casting, locations and more.  @HungerGamesExam is one of them.  She also has a website here with regular updates.  Filming has started, but I'm guessing any trailer is a fair way off.  But it will come...

Cheers

Ruth

The secret life of libraries

(The Mitchell Library in Sydney:: photo used under Creative Commons license)

From various sources on my Twitter stream, I have been following the stories about library closures in the UK.  The Guardian has a thoughtful, thought-provoking and sometimes rather amusing article about the secret life of libraries; it's by Bella Bathurst.  They have always had a dusty image – and never more so than now – but libraries are at the heart of our communities. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what we're about to lose.

Some more quotes:

Discussing the types of books stolen in various parts of the country, she observes: among all communities and in all parts of Britain, our old passion for self-improvement remains vivid.
...
But the cuts also underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What's the point of buildings filled with print? Isn't all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn't libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?
...
The great untold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they're about study and solitude, but because they're about connection.
...

(Seattle Public Library::photo used under Creative Commons license)

...reading seems to be becoming an increasingly alien concept for children. "The pace of life is different now, and people expect art to happen to them. Music and film do that, a CD will do that, but you have to make a book happen to you. It's between you and it. People can be changed by books, and that's scary. When I was working in the school library, I'd sometimes put a book in a kid's hands and I'd feel excited for them, because I knew that it might be the book that changed their life. And once in a while, you'd see that happen, you'd see a kind of light come on behind their eyes. Even if it's something like 0.4% of the population that that ever happens to, it's got to be worth it, hasn't it?"

The article concludes thus:
The libraries' most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.


It's a terrific article, very much worth reading in its entirety.  I want to think some more about its ideas, such as connection, and conversation, and art happening, the sort of engagement involved in the act of reading.  This week, as every week, I will have the joy and pleasure and sheer bloody fun of putting a book in the hands of a kid and watching their eyes light up, or (they are teenagers after all) their body language just relax that small bit that is (in reality) a decibels-loud acknowledgement that the book and the transaction and the library were good things for them.  And so many of them have fabulous smiles, don't they?
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

A beginner's guide to steampunk (+ a tentacle)

Abebooks.com, a large online second-hand bookselling site, has a useful beginner's guide to steampunk literature.

I recognised some of the titles highlighted on the page, and found others to follow up, for the school library and for me. (The image above is a screenshot - click on this link to go to the page and see it in readable detail).

The Wikipedia article on Steampunk is another place to start - not only the content, but also the links.  One of the footnotes, for example, takes you to this article from How Stuff Works, canvassing the genre and steampunk art/craft works/creations.

Searching the handmade craft site (beautiful beautiful things!) Etsy.com with the keyword 'steampunk' yields over 70,000 pieces of jewellery, clothing and more reflecting the steampunk aesthetic (as this screenshot demonstrates - what you see will vary constantly as items are sold and new items listed).

Cheers

Ruth

PS. If you narrow your Etsy search on steampunk to the most expensive items in the 'geekery - weird' category, you get some corkers.

I think the wall tentacle is my favourite.  Wouldn't that be a talking point in a school library??? (hmmm, would need to be on a high wall so it didn't put a student's eye out...!!)

Rick Riordan's new book: sneak peek chapter

If your Rick Riordan fans who loved Percy Jackson have kept going with the Kane Chronicles (Red Pyramid is out, Throne of Fire is out soon) they may like to get hold of sneak peek of Throne of Fire via Amazon.  At time of writing (these things change, so don't get cranky if the freebie is gone!) you can preorder a Kindle e-book edition of "The Throne of Fire Chapter Sneak Peek" for $0 (not $18.99) and it will be delivered on May 3, 2011. 

You don't need a Kindle e-reader to read it, you can read Kindle-formatted books via iPhone app, on your PC/Mac etc - the page has links to these.

Here's the link!

Great chance to offer your students a freebie by a popular YA author.

Cheers

Ruth

Image source: Amazon, as per link above.

Fiction reviews, straight to your inbox

The very excellent Fiction Focus blog from CMIS in WA has an email subscription option so you can find out about new fiction reviews.  Find out about all their sub options, and sign up by clicking here.

One to share with your English teachers?

Cheers

Ruth

A free sci-fi e-story (still!): Boojum

So this morning I had a conversation with an English teacher who wanted to plug his senior English class into the many science fiction options in our fiction section...

And I remembered as well this blog entry from two years ago:

A while ago I read the anthology of pirate stories, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer: they've edited a number of anthologies in the fantasy/steampunk genres, generally pitched at an adult audience (which isn't to say the stories aren't good for kids, but is to say that the anthologies aren't constructed to eliminate that which might not be considered by some suitable for an adolescent audience).


My favourite story in this anthology, without a doubt, was Boojum by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. Black Alice is a space pirate, not a wet pirate, on a ship that is a creature (a boojum); it's a clever clever tale with a twist. It was one I lent to senior Extension English students to look at as an idea of how a longer short piece of writing might be constructed (since a number of them were writing prose fiction for their major works).

And tootling around on Google in the hols, I discovered that of all the pirate stories in all the world, this one is available online (as described in this blog entry) as an e-story pdf, Hurrah! Click here to read BOOJUM!


It has a couple of bits of contextual coarse language in it, so if that's a concern for you read it first before sharing with kids (read it anyway, just because it's good). It's high school level in its ideas, rather than primary school. But if you're looking for an e-example of a story to share, try this.

Knowing I'd blogged about it here on Skerricks, I went back to the entry and you know what?  The link still works!  So if you didn't read/use it then, or had forgotten about it, here's a reminder of a spiffing story.  You can save a copy of the pdf, too...

Cheers

Ruth

Image source: the story's pdf.

Elizabeth Bennet's email inbox

You didn't know she had email?

Think again!

Apart from the fact that it's highly amusing, it's also got fabulous potential as an English exercise.

Find it here, and the site has more famous inboxes from literature (Dickens, Harry Potter, etc) and elsewhere.

Found via Twitter.

Cheers

Ruth

What is a good book? Nancy Pearl's answer

Nancy Pearl, yup, the one that's the model for the librarian action doll, was recently named Librarian of the Year.  In Library Journal's article about this, Nancy discusses her idea of 'a good book'.  I've highlighted a couple of bits that particularly caught my attention.

What is a “good book”?



As part of the author tour for her newest book, Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (Sasquatch Bks.; LJ Xpress Reviews, 10/8/10), Pearl went to Westport, CT, to “talk about good books” to librarians and library patrons. “By good,” she says, “I don’t mean any literary canon, but just books that you might enjoy. A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,” says Pearl.


“We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading,” Pearl says.


“When people ask, ‘What should I read next?’ we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns,” Pearl says.

“People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest,” she ­continues.

“I do believe that the more well-written books you read, the less tolerance you are going to have for bad writing, but the hardest thing to define is a well-written book. When someone tells you they liked a book because ‘I love well-written books,’ they usually mean books like award winners, for instance the Pulitzers. Those books win awards for the writing. You don’t have to understand what somebody means by ‘well-written,’ but you have to go beyond the awards we all know and see which books won the Governor General’s Award in Canada, or [Britain’s] Man Booker Prize. No one who reads for the story will say, ‘I like well-written books.’ They will talk about page-turners, books you stay up too late to finish,” Pearl ­concludes.

Lots of food for thought there.  I'm going to try that three book idea... I think I've been more likely, when kids ask, to find three similar rather than that three book progression.  Not always, but often enough that I should be trying to extend myself, as well as my readers.  Always good to get a new perspective!  Read the complete article here.
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

PS.

A few more thought-provoking quotes from the article:

...she is a passionate and diligent advocate for old and important library ideas: literacy, reading, entertainment, enjoyment.... She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,” says Janes.
*
says Pearl. “My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading.”
*
The book will never disappear as a piece of narrative fiction or nonfiction, according to Pearl, but it is obvious that the format, the way it is delivered, is changing. She knows people will always need escape, stories, and ways to look at the world through the experiences of others.


“I think the more you read, the better person you become, because you can see how other people respond, the way they think, and the way they behave in various circumstances,” Pearl asserts.
*
“When you read a book, it is just you and the author. Even when people read the same title, everybody reads a different book.... When you listen to a book, a third person enters the equation,” Pearl says. “It is a different experience.”

Film trailer: I Am Number Four

Exciting a certain amount of interest among the kids is the book I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (Pittacus Lore is the pseudonym for the writing duo James Frey (author of "A Million Little Pieces") and Jobie Hughes).  The film which was in previews in Sydney cinemas this weekend might have had something to do with it.... I've put a couple of articles from Empire magazine and elsewhere (there was a whole page in last Friday's SMH Metro section)  in our display cabinet by the stairs, and a number of the kids have stopped, read, and asked for the book (it's now got a waiting list). 

I've been using the trailer as one of several in a lesson about adventures that I've been doing with Year 8 English, and it's one that gets their attention:



YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5djHG3hPu0

Neither Roger Ebert nor the New York Times reviewer think particularly highly of the film (click on those links to go to the reviews) but that is unlikely to dampen enthusiasm....

The film stars Alex Pettyfer, who also stars in the remake of Beauty and the Beast, Beastly, based on the book by Alex Flinn (click on that link to my blog entry about Beastly; the release date of Beastly has apparently been delayed to see if Alex Pettyfer's performance in I Am Number Four can up the box office appeal of Beastly.  imdb.com still shows no Australian release date for Beastly; its US date is 4 March, hard on the heels of I am Number Four).  Beastly official site: click here.

The I Am Number Four book's publishers are keen to set it up as a series with a following: there is an 'official home' (click here)  and it has also generated at least one fansite.  Find the official film site by clicking here.

Cheers

Ruth

I am Number Four sourced from the NYTimes review linked above. Beastly film poster from imdb.com, linked above.

Rap: I'm reading a book

Forwarded to me by one of the senior executive at my school:



Find it here if the above doesn't work for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuRuwR2JSXI

Which I'm sure I'll find an opportunity to show!

Cheers

Ruth

2012: National Year of Reading

The website says:

Welcome

Australian libraries and library associations have got together to turn 2012 into the National Year of Reading, linking together all the great things that are already happening around books, reading and literacy, and giving them an extra boost, with inspirational programs and events taking place across the country.

We’ll be partnering with government, writers, schools, publishers, booksellers, employers, child care providers, health professionals and a whole host of other organisations that share our passion for reading.

“Having books in the home has a greater impact on children in the most disadvantaged families. It is at the lower end of the scale, where books are scarce, that each additional book matters most.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 2010

National Year of Reading

The National Year of Reading goes live to the library and book world at the Australian Booksellers Conference in Brisbane, on 12 July 2010, and Impact 2010, the Public Libraries NSW conference in Albury, on 14 July, but the really big launch date is for the year itself on February 14, 2012.

So how can you get involved? Read on…

The site has flyers, teasers, and lots more info.  Put the date in your calendar now!

Cheers

Ruth

"The kids' books are all right"

While au fait literary types around town await the buzzed-about new novels from Jonathan Franzen and Nicole Krauss, other former English majors have spent the summer trying to get hold of “Mockingjay,” the third book in Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy, so intensely under wraps that not even reviewers have been allowed a glimpse before its airtight Aug. 24 release. What fate will befall our heroine, Katniss Everdeen? My fellow book club members and I are desperate to know. When will the Capitol fall? And how can Collins possibly top the first two installments, “The Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire”?



Oh, did I mention? “Mockingjay” is for teenagers. I am well into my 30s.

But I am not embarrassed by my, shall we say, immature taste in literature. And I wasn’t much concerned when, barreling through “The Hunger Games” at the hospital after giving birth to my third child, I hardly noticed whether he ate or slept. When will the rebellion begin, I wanted to know. Which suitor will Katniss choose?

The kids' books are all right, writes Pamela Paul in the New York Times.

Yup, they are.  The link above also gives you access to the NYT books podcast in which Pamela talks about her enthusiasm for the genre.  The article goes on to say:

...the erosion of age-­determined book categories, initiated by Harry Potter, has been hastened along by an influx of crossover authors like Stephenie Meyer and interlopers like Sherman Alexie, James Patterson, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen and John Grisham, to name just a few stars from across the spectrum of adult fiction who have turned to writing Y.A. According to surveys by the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-old women and 24 percent of same-aged men say most of the books they buy are classified as young adult. The percentage of female Y.A. fans between the ages of 25 and 44 has nearly doubled in the past four years. Today, nearly one in five 35- to 44-year-olds say they most frequently buy Y.A. books. For themselves.

Cheers

Ruth

Graphic Festival in Sydney

GRAPHIC is a new festival focusing on animation and comic-book culture.  Among the featured 'names' are Kevin Clark and Neil Gaiman: meet the mythmakers of the modern world is one of its taglines. 

Read more about it here - it's on in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House this coming weekend 8-9 August 2010. 

Bookings, info, downloadable program etc. here. (Source of the screenshot image above).

One to get out to the manga/anime/graphic/comicbook/Supernovaisoverforanotheryearandmylifeisadesert crew.

Cheers

Ruth

Read the new Twilight novella about Bree Tanner FREE for the next month

Toddle on over to http://www.breetanner.com/ to read this novella free until 5 July 2010. (According to this SMH article).

Don't forget to advise the Twilightery at your school.  I blogged about this at the start of the term, but figured you'd appreciate a reminder.  There will also be a hardback version for sale, is the information I have.

Cheers

Ruth

PS I'm scheduling this to publish on Skerricks on 8 June to accommodate the time difference between here and the US. 

An author on e-books and the future of reading.

Author Anna Quindlen writes about the future of reading for Newsweek - print books, e-books, reading itself.

The conclusion of her article:

As Kafka once said, "A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."



Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that's why it survives. There are book clubs and book Web sites and books on tape and books online. There are still millions of people who like the paper version, at least for now. And if that changes—well, what is a book, really? Is it its body, or its soul? Would Dickens have recognized a paperback of A Christmas Carol, or, for that matter, a Braille version? Even on a cell-phone screen, Tiny Tim can God-bless us, every one.



Cheers, and more cheers for the axe and the candle
 
Ruth

75 vampire books and counting...

The US National Public Radio program, All Things Considered, recently did a program on vampire fiction.  Including a list of seventy five vampire books read by Margot Adler.  Read her article and list, For love of do-good vampires: a bloody book list, or you can listen to it at that link too.  It's an interesting historical analysis of the vampire genre in fiction and on film and television - why they intrigue us, why this genre, constantly reinvented, sustains its appeal.

Not to be picky or nuffink, bu she misses the best one (as I note was pointed out in at least one comment at the end of the article):

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley.  My absolute favourite.  I've blogged about it before, and re-read it every year or two, to savour it again.  Wonderful writing, fabulous world-building, great characters.

From a school library point of view, the list isn't specifically compiled for a teenage audience, so don't assume all the titles are Safe For The Young and instant school-library-adds.  But it's a great resource.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. found the link via the blog at http://www.gailcarriger.com/

Young people hate books and dead tree publishing is finished. Yes?

Found this YouTube video via Lucacept.



And Lucacept's discussion about the issues facing libraries lending files (e-books, audiobooks) is most relevant and not, at present, finding answers from publishers.

Watch the video on YouTube here if you the one above doesn't work for you.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg&feature=player_embedded
It's a brilliant video.  Brilliant.  Bravo DK/Penguin USA.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. And the format of this strikes me as having possibilities for writing, too.

Books written for adults but grabbing teen readers

 ...before you assume 'adult books' means stuff you find in an 'adult bookshop' - nah.  Clicking about in relation to Soulless by Gail Carriger (huge fun, one of my Easter holiday reads) ...

I tripped over the American Library Association's Alex Awards - recognising books that were written for the adult market but have found eager readers among teenagers and young adults.  While there's a tad of an American skew (hardly unsurprising), it's still a handy little collection development tool.  There are links on the pages to the Alex Awards in 2009 and earlier years, so you can hunt back through for possible additions to your school library.

Another on the 2010 list is the dark graphic novel Stitches: a memoir by David Small, which I bought on the recommendation of Paul McDonald of the Children's Bookshop in Beecroft.

I don't have a separate 'senior' section or stickering (kids in my school are years 7-12, or about 11-18 years old); what I do for the occasional book is have a note in the back next to the date due slip (where whichever staff member is lending out the book will see it) with a wording that goes something like, "Dear Reader, if you are in Years 7,8,9 or 10, you will need to consult the teacher librarian before borrowing this book."  I figure this means we can chat about those which may need chatting (eg. the Year 7 boy who wanted to borrow The Time Traveler's Wife on the basis of the time travel bit, rather than realising quite the marital detail involved in the wife bit).  It also means those in search of titillation (hey, a Senior Book - it must have Good Bits!!!) have a hard road to hoe, as they don't have external cues (separate section or stickering) to help them on their way.  If a junior kid is dead keen to borrow a book with this note in it, one option is to phone the parents/guardians and discuss the matter, and this usually ends up being a productive road to a solution.

Two novels I've read in the last couple of years which fell on the Yup and Nope sides of my collection development: although Love like water was a shortlisted book in the Children's Book Council Awards in the older reader category a couple of years ago, it has been borrowed not much if at all.  I read it, and thought the age of the main characters (around their early twenties) and their activities and preoccupations made it much more of a book interesting to young adults rather than high school age kids; I wasn't brought to care much about the characters or what happened to them.  I've included it in displays, had it on my face-out book stand and so on, but it just doesn't find friends.  If I'd read it before buying (and let's face it, you can't read everything before buying), I don't think I would have. So it's a Nope.  Last hols I read Melina Marchetta's new book, The piper's son, a few-years-later sequel to Saving Francesca.  I'm much more confident that this will find readers, and not only because it's a sequel.  While it too is suited to older high school students, it's more engaging in its storytelling, drawing you in and along.  The characters are in their early twenties, but more accessible and engaging, the focus of the book more positive than the underlying negativity I felt while reading Love like water.  I read the Marchetta book before adding it to the collection, wanting to be aware of its content, and it's a definite Yup.

Cheers

Ruth

image source for Soulless
image source for Stitches